Meditation

Results? Immediately I guess. I mean, when you direct your attention at a thing, or concentrate on a thing. On text on the screen or an idea in your head or trying to balance on one foot. When you chill out and concentrate on that, you get results immediately, right? I mean you can suddenly balance better, read the book better, play the videogame better, think more clearly... so it isn't that strange.

And then as I mediate more I get more results. More silence, clarity etc.

And the results always linger after the actual meditation (tapering off over hours and days). So if I meditate and then, while enjoying the results of that meditation, I meditate again, those results stack. So I get bigger results. And if I meditate 6 times that day I get big results. And if I do that for a few days I get very big results.

When I first started meditating I did a concentration type technique and what I did was experiment with a few different things to concentrate on. Visualization, things I look at, things I feel, sounds, mantras... I hunted around till I found a thing to concentrate on that worked right for me.

Now, when I do concentration meditation, I use "the feeling of breath in the tip of my nose" as my thing to concentrate on. (my "object").

I think the most pronounced effect I got was from visualisation based meditation and made it easier to see clear mental imagery and to control what the imagery is. This was from sporadically doing it for about 10 minutes every couple of days over the course of a couple of months a couple of years ago. Considering picking it up again at some point.

I'd normally get off-the-cushion results after about ten days of daily practice.

What effects

You 'catch' emotions before they start affecting behaviour. Emotions are what cause procrastination and things like that.

It doesn't give superpowers or anything, it's more of a reminder to be present. If you think meditating is going to give you mastery of your problems in life then that's the wrong way to look at it IMO, I use it to spot-treat lack of focus or general anxiety and it works well enough for me at that.